


Running Towards the Tide

by lonestarbabe (neverfeltlesscool), Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Series: High Tide Always Retreats [1]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: (because of being underaged and feeling pressured), Dark, Depression, Dubious Consent, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, S01E08 tag, Soon to be not canon, Suicidal Ideation, TK Got Shot, Underage Sex, but hopeful, creepy men, four times plus one, not too graphic, suicidal thought, that's all i think...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:14:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23029903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfeltlesscool/pseuds/lonestarbabe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: T.K. has to decide if he wants to wake up and keep living or let go of life altogether after he has been shot.Or Four Times T.K. Wanted to Die (+1 he didn’t)
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/ TK Strand (implied), Owen Strand & TK Strand
Series: High Tide Always Retreats [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667959
Comments: 20
Kudos: 170





	Running Towards the Tide

**One**

The first time T.K. felt the darkness was when he was five years old. He’d been laying in bed, staring at the shadows on his ceiling. His imagination ran wild with all the thoughts of what lurked in his room that looked pixelated in the darkness. He shivered under his blankets, dreading closing his eyes while also dreading keeping them open. He didn’t know what horrors surrounded him, and it was unclear whether it was better to see the threats or remain unaware.

He craved to run away with his imagination to a distant land where it was never dark. He’d stare at his nightlight until he went to sleep just to have a little light shooting through his eyelids, but when he woke up, even with the sun peering in through his window, the shadows were still very much alive. There was a gray film on everything, and T.K. couldn’t figure out why or how to fix it, and he didn’t know enough about the phenomenon to explain it to his parents. They’d probably just think he was imagining the grayness just like they thought he was imagining the monsters he saw in the shadows.

The darkness had come out of the blue in its black glory. Nothing bad brought it on. It wasn’t as if T.K. was that different from other five-year-olds. The darkness was just something that had attached itself to T.K. for whatever reason. Some kids had imaginary friends. T.K. had the darkness. Sometimes, it would go away for a little while, off to visit some other poor soul, but it always returned just as cloying as ever. It pretended to want what was best for T.K., but the darkness didn’t protect him. It put him in the worst kind of danger, the kind that came from within. It made him feel terrified and alone. It made him want to be better so badly that he wound up feeling worse.

The darkness was loyal. Hiding with him when his parents would bicker in soft voices that had the breathiness of a whisper and the loudness of a yell. They only fought when he went to bed, but T.K. was a big boy. He knew what they were doing. Could hear them saying things they would apologize for in the morning. The dark brought the worst out of them.

Loneliness filled his small chest as he heard his parents fight. He figured their issues somehow had to be about him, and that was the loneliest feeling in the world. It was hard being so young and already trying to process such adult things. He needed someone to be there for him through such a hard time. He’d wanted a dog, but the darkness had to suffice as his most loyal confidante because his parents had, after some midnight fights, decided that a dog in the city was a bad idea.

When 9/11 happened, a few years later, the darkness came again stronger than ever, but he didn’t think much of it because it came down upon the whole city, seeping out into the rest of the United States like mucky water overflowing from a toilet. Fear and despair loomed from the planes overhead, the skyscrapers, the street signs, and the roads, all the way down to the subway tracks running steadfastly under the city. One horrific event changed the whole country, creating undeniable grief that would spread throughout the world in various iterations. No one was spared from the impacts. Life became more frantic, which was hard when T.K. already struggled to keep up.

The terror of that day stuck with T.K. He thanked God that his dad had brought home, but then, he realized that his dad was alive but not the same man he had been. Now, Owen was friends with the darkness too, and it was confusing for a kid to understand the darkness in his dad when he couldn’t even understand it in himself. It was startling how the chaos of 9/11 fell into the terrifying silence of post 9-11 life.

He remembered the days when it had all calmed down. There was still a lot going on in the world, of course, but domestically, life had come to a standstill. The funerals were done. The terrorist attacks were still talked about nonstop on the news, but in T.K.’s house, that was not the case. The televisions stayed off. His parents didn’t talk. They didn’t even fight. His mother told him not to make a fuss for his father when she left to put in extra hours at work.

T.K. would curl up in bed, and he’d have nightmares about his dad dying and being burned and broken. His dad was the sole survivor from his team, which was even more harrowing to T.K. because that meant surviving was the anomaly. It felt like his dad had cheated death and that death would surely come for him with a vengeance. T.K. was terrified to let Owen from his sight. Sometimes, at night, when his parents were already asleep, he’d sneak into bed between them, which he hadn’t done since he was four.

His mom would scold him, telling him that he was too old to be in their bed because she didn’t want him to witness Owen’s own nightmares. But T.K. hated being so distant from them, even if he was only a wall away, and it wasn’t fair that he had to sleep alone in his twin sized bed. T.K. told himself that he had to be brave, just like his father. He wanted to be a firefighter someday, a hero, so he practiced bravery at night. He promised himself that someday practicing would pay off and he could grow up to save people and help them be brave.

At night, T.K. would cry, muffling his sobs in his pillow because dad didn’t need the noise. T.K. had to be extra good. His daddy was sad, and T.K. feared that if he misbehaved, his dad would have trouble getting better. His dad needed to get better, and it seemed that until his dad stopped being sad, T.K. couldn’t be either because as T.K. stayed in the sad silence of his apartment, a fuzziness filled his stomach.

He felt like a shaken soda with no way to relieve the pressure, and eventually, he’d burst, throwing a tantrum and begging for someone to ease the perpetual grayness. His dad would pull him into a hug, and his mom would tell Owen not to coddle him because she didn’t want him to grow up being a brat. He’d feel guilty for taking too much of his dad’s attention and for stressing his mom out even more when she had the responsibility of keeping the whole household afloat while his dad got better.

He’d hate himself for being so terrible. He’d imagine his dad getting sicker under the stress of having such an awful son. His mom would beg him to try harder when she tucked him in at night, looking uncharacteristically frazzled like she’d been through World War III, but T.K. didn’t know how to try harder when he had so many feelings he couldn’t control, so he shut them off when he could. He pretended he couldn’t feel anything and went through life like a robot, and the less of himself he showed, the more the tension seemed to lift from his mother’s shoulders and his dad started getting better. As an adult, T.K. could realize that the changes were a product of therapy and time, but as a kid, the magic solution to his family’s woes seemed to rely on T.K.’s good behavior.

But feelings couldn’t be erased. Like garbage, they could be carted to the landfill, but they’d still sit there in an overwhelming pile of rot. They’d mix in a dizzying mass that would make joy indistinguishable from anger. So, the feelings were there. They had to be somewhere, but he’d compacted them so much that they’d melded together, and to fully embrace any one of those feelings, he’d have to painstakingly tear the pieces apart and address all the junk that was too hard to fathom in his young mind. So, he kept pushing it all away. To the landfill it all went.

Even as his dad got better, life was still messy. He’d slip up and do something bad, and more problems would occur. His dad was in a better place. He was back to work, making T.K. fear for the worst every time his dad left. When Owen was home, T.K. clung to him like a shadow on a sunny day until Owen had to leave T.K. again, and as a displayed shadow, T.K. became only darkness. Still, when things were good, they were perfect. Owen was back to playing with T.K. and being the best dad in the world. T.K.’s mom smiled more and would pull him into long hugs, kiss his head, and ask him about what he did at school. She’d tell him he was such a good boy. But then he wasn’t, and his parents fought more, still in those trying-to-whisper shouts, and the pressure to be good kicked in all over again because if he stopped, the darkness would engulf his family.

He hated walking through life, acting as a prop to his parents’ crumbling marriage. He knew his parents would have helped him if they knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell them that anything was wrong because good kids could handle bad things all on their own, and T.K. didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t a good kid, especially because it would be just another burden for his family when they’d been through enough. So, he shut up, but when he’d go to bed, he’d whisper swear words under the covers just to hear himself speak. He’d fill the silence with the nastiness he had to repress.

The awfulness could be less awful if he let the darkness help him control it. He could run away from all the bad feelings even when he was diving headfirst into an inferno. Running was tiring, though, and he just wanted a rest.

He’d let the darkness lay in bed beside him as the silence of night haunted him. The darkness filled him with a restless dread. It’d tell him that it would be easier not to exist, and he’d believe it. He wasn’t going to do anything to hurt himself. Good boys didn’t do that, but he prayed that he’d die in his sleep, get kidnapped, or just be wiped from existence completely. He wanted something to take him out of his misery. Death was scary, but the quiet was scarier. He imagined himself standing in New York traffic and feelings the cars and swerve around him. People would shout and honk. His ears would be filled with stimuli, and T.K. found the thought to be delightful. Anything was better than being the good boy who never shouted or made a fuss and was constantly running in a hamster ball full of turds.

* * *

**Two**

At sixteen, he started drinking because honestly, he didn’t see the point in being, or trying to be, the perfect kid anymore because clearly, he was just a troublemaker and would only bring the people he loved pain no matter what he did. Being good had brought him no happiness and it was time to try the opposite.

He wanted to drink, get high, get F’s, and kiss boys. It started with parties in penthouses with friends from school, which was fun and all, but T.K. needed something more. High school parties with some booze and weed just didn’t seem bad enough. Everyone did it, but T.K. didn’t want to be like everyone. So, he started hanging around gay bars with a fake ID that people probably didn’t buy but mostly didn’t question. He was shy at first, sipping his drink and chatting with people who came up to him. Occasionally, he’d end up making out in a back alley, but then, he’d cut off the kissing and head home, scared of the next step. The more he kissed, the less scary sex became, but sex would always be scary, he figured, until he tried it. Honestly, he just wanted to do it so he could stop thinking about how he might mess it up, so one night, he went to a sketchy bar and searched for someone to pop his cherry.

The first time was something he could never forget. It was with a twenty-two-year-old who he’d met at a bar that he was too young to be in. T.K. had lied and said he was twenty-one, and he sipped on a vodka tonic thankful that the bartender had barely looked at his ID. He’d try to look as old as he could, trading his uniform, a prestigious emblem stitched on the chest, for dark jeans and a button-down shirt with little leaves on it, a perfect fusion of “I just threw this on because I’m naturally cool,” and “I actually put in effort in so you know I mean business.”

Alan had come up to him, complimenting him on how young he looked with a wink, and said, “I like my men to look like boys.” T.K. fought the chills that had gathered that wanted to run a marathon up his spine. He didn’t have time to be scared. He only wanted someone to fuck him so it would be done with. He wasn’t looking for love. T.K. loved love, but on that night, he was looking to be used by this older, experienced guy who didn’t seem to care if T.K. was as old as he said he was.

They went back to Alan’s apartment, where Alan’s roommate was waiting. Alan asked if it was okay if Adrian joined in, and T.K. said yes because he figured it be weird for a gay boy to say no to sex with two hot men even though he’d imagined his first time being something more intimate.

He had the urge to run away crying to his dad like a little kid. He wanted to go home and play Trouble in the safety of his dad’s dinky apartment that he’d gotten after the divorce. But he didn’t want to look like a baby, so he went ahead with the threesome, thinking that this way he could shake the good boy out forever.

Alan had dragged him into the bedroom, ripping his shirt open as buttons popped off, and T.K. panicked, wondering how the hell he was going to go home wearing that. “Don’t worry,” you can borrow one of mine,” Alan had promised. Adrian had joined in, kissing his neck and rubbing a hand across his torso.

He couldn’t keep up with all the body parts that touched him, or the things Alan and Adrian did to him because he was sixteen and had no idea what he was doing, which was why he’d found the most mature guy who seemed interested and latched onto him. He’d gotten two for the price of one. He should be happy, but the darkness was pushing on his chest and he didn’t know how to make it go away. Backing out certainly wouldn’t make him feel better. He’d just feel like a loser virgin. So, he let the two men do what they wanted and tried to keep his breathing steady and his eyes open.

It felt good during sex. Sort of. His body had reacted, at least, but after, T.K. felt dirty. He wanted to curl up in a ball and never leave his bed again. He went home wearing a shirt that was two sizes too big for him and smelling like a man he wanted to forget. He wanted to burn the shirt, emblazoned with NYU, but he kept it in his closet. He still has it a decade later, and it’s more his size now, not that he can stand to put it on. He doesn’t know why he keeps it, but it feels important. Like an anti-safety-blanket. Something to remind him to be careful with his heart.

He cried on and off for three days afterward, and he couldn’t hide his feelings from his father this time, no matter how much he didn’t want to have to talk. Owen sat down by T.K. on his bed, rubbing calming circles on his back and brushing a hand through his hair. “Hey, want to tell me what’s wrong?”

And no, getting fucked by two strangers wasn’t something T.K. wanted to tell anyone, especially not the person who he most wanted to make proud, so he settled for the less offensive version of the truth, “Dad, I’m gay.”

The way Owen pulled T.K. into his arms and said, “It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that,” made T.K. want to die a little less. “Actually, it’s more than okay. It’s you, my beautiful, strong kid,” made T.K. feel like he’d never be good enough for the great things in his life. Good boy or bad boy, the darkness would linger.

* * *

**Three**

At twenty, T.K. figured out how to make the darkness brighter after breaking his leg. A couple Oxy and the pitch blackness would become bright, fluorescent light, fake and far from the sunlight his pale skin craved.

He also fell in love with a guy named Ambrose, addictive and nearly as blinding as the Oxy. Ambrose was the kind of guy who could convince Jesus to worship the devil. He’d compliment T.K., and brush his hands through his hair, just like T.K.’s dad had always done when he was sick. T.K. always loved that, and Ambrose knew it. He used it as a weapon, but T.K. was glad to have the affection.

They’d get into a fight, Ambrose accusing T.K. of cheating when he came home laughing and smiling after dinner with a friend. Or even his dad. He’d demean T.K. for half an hour until T.K. cried and begged for forgiveness. Ambrose would say, “You should have thought of that when you chose another man over me,” and he’d give T.K. the silent treatment for hours because Ambrose knew the silence made T.K. go crazy.

Finally, T.K. would explode. He’d yell at a silent Ambrose, trading tears for pleading. Ambrose would never answer. He’d merely continue making dinner, and he’s set two places at the small table in the living room. He’d make the table extra romantic with candles and cloth napkins, but when T.K. went to sit down, Ambrose would say, “This could have been for you if you weren’t such a whore,” and he’d take the extra plate away and serve himself the decadent meal while T.K. would have to watch Ambrose eat as he nibbled on whatever he could find in the cupboards.

T.K. would go to bed, thinking to himself that he had to get away, but then, at just the right time, Ambrose’s voice would fill T.K.’s ears. “Baby, I’m sorry,” he would say, “I just worry that you can’t help but sleep around. It might be who you are, and I can’t take thinking about you with other people. Can’t you see what you do to me?”

Sometimes, T.K. would try to protest, “That’s not how I am.” Mostly, he would stay silent, not as a weapon but because he didn’t know what else to say.

Ambrose would laugh like it was a silly thing to say. “When you lost your virginity, you had a threesome,” as if a threesome somehow made him unqualified to be faithful in a relationship. T.K. wished he’d never told Ambrose about that. He didn’t mention that the threesome had been traumatizing and shitty because he was sixteen and didn’t know how to say no or that he still had the NYU shirt in his closet. “But you never have threesomes with me.”

“I’m sorry,” T.K. would always say at the end of their fights, somehow feeling like he was the one who had screwed things up… yet again. He ruined things. That’s just how he was.

T.K. dreaded spending too much time with Ambrose, but he stayed for the highs. The romantic dinners, the champagne, the Oxy that Ambrose would slip T.K. as a treat for being especially obedient. He spent less time with his dad when he was with Ambrose. Ambrose hated T.K.’s dad, thought that he was too controlling while Owen thought the same thing about Ambrose, urging T.K. to end the relationship. “It’s abusive,” Owen would say, but T.K. didn’t think so. He figured he deserved all the cruel words. It wasn’t like Ambrose hit him. Though, physical violence probably wouldn’t deter T.K. much when it came to Ambrose either.

Fortunately, but heartbreakingly at the time, the relationship came to a sudden halt when Ambrose got sick of T.K. “moping all the time.” Ambrose broke up with him when T.K. was twenty-three, and he wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sink into a deeper depression, so he did both, using meaningless sex to get him through while celebrating that Ambrose was no longer a part of his life. The more his partners used him, the better. He still refused multiple partners at once, though, because that would be a level of self-destruction that even T.K. couldn’t handle.

He could spend time with his dad without feeling guilty, and sleep with whoever he wanted. It was great. As great as life could be when everything still felt like a train wreck and your heart was still shattered for a stupid person who didn’t deserve to have so much power over you.

After Ambrose, T.K. used oxy more because rough sex wasn’t enough to cut the pain rushing through him or the numbness that he used to drown the pain. He’d wake up having lost hours of his time or in a stranger’s bed, and he was perfectly fine with that. He started withdrawing from his family again, who didn’t stop caring just because T.K. shut them out. He worked during the day and at night, he’d get high.

His dad cornered him one day, telling him he needed to seek treatment, but T.K. didn’t listen. He didn’t want to get help. He wanted to die and stop feeling all the bad things while still feeling good things. Oxy let him do that for a little while. It eased the aching in his body, and he wondered how he didn’t know of it before he broke his leg. He had been living in the darkness for so long, and he was still living in the darkness, but now, he had a lamp to simulate brightness.

It wasn’t until an overdose that T.K. couldn’t avoid his dad’s pleas for treatment any longer, so T.K. got better, and he stopped using, but the darkness wasn’t dead because T.K. was very much alive. T.K. found new ways to control his feelings. More meaningless sex, men who would hurt him, his job as a firefighter. He wasn’t handling his life healthily, but he was handling it as best as he could. Without Oxy.

Then, eventually, he met Alex, who seemed to care about T.K., and who refused to have sex with him until the third date. Alex was meaningful, and it felt like a welcome change. He thought Alex would burst through the haze and make him feel something again. Things didn’t turn out as he wanted, obviously.

Alan, Adrian, Ambrose, Alex. He always did have a thing for the A names, who always turned out to be people who treated him the ways he wanted but didn’t deserve. Alarming, Abysmal, Abusive, Acerbic. He tried not to think about the most dangerous A name: Addicted.

**Four**

He still doesn’t know if the overdose was a planned suicide attempt. It wasn’t something he’d thought that much about, really. It had been an impulse more than anything, but there’s a part of him that figured it would be better to die. Even in death, he didn’t want anyone to know about the darkness that had lived inside him for so long because it was so shameful, but he was starting to fear that death was the only way to get rid of the darkness for good, so taking a bunch pills seemed like a good idea. He’d just seem like an addict who went a little too crazy. He’d leave it up to fate what happened to him.

So, while he doesn’t know if he planned on trying to kill himself, in effect, he wanted to. He wouldn’t have taken so many pills if he just wanted to get high. Accidental overdoses do happen, but T.K. knew he couldn’t handle that many. He knew it, but he did it anyway, praying to the God he didn’t believe in that this would be the end. He should’ve known that prayers don’t work when there’s no one there to receive them.

It wasn’t even about Alex. Obviously, being cheated on and a failed proposal weren’t fun, but somewhere deep down, he knew that he and Alex would never work. Alex was just a body to fill the hole in T.K.’s life. T.K. had loved him, but he’d worked to love him, and he’d fought for that love long past its expiration. Then, when Alex was gone, it was overwhelming. The dam was leaky, and now there was nothing left to plug it. Alex had been a band-aid, one T.K. had gotten used to relying on, and as everything fell apart all at once, T.K. was overwhelmed with all the things he’d never dealt with. He’d found some oxy, and decided to take a break while hoping that maybe, he could quit altogether.

The scariest part is that he went from the sharp panic of wanting— needing— to die to waking up and feeling fine. Well, not fine, but not like he’d jump off the first ledge he could find. The darkness had temporarily backed off, and the shame of a failed suicide-ish attempt kept him from wanting to take any more risks right away.

The after-effects of an overdose sucked, but while he was still in the hospital, he felt an unusual calm, and then, just as the anxiety had begun to infiltrate his body again, the move to Texas had kept him too busy to sit much with the feelings he was avoiding, so while he wasn’t okay, he could pretend that he was. Pretend that he was better. Pretend that he was putting his all into therapy. Pretend that he was the good son he long ago realized he could never be.

After his attempt, he felt better even if he knew the dark thoughts would still come in and out of him like patients through the hospital’s revolving door. The thing about suicidal thoughts is that they never last forever. They rush in like high tide, but then, they recede. They go away for a bit, but they come back and angry and vicious, and they erode you. They wear you down until you can’t stand to wait the thoughts out and have the overwhelming compulsion just to get rid of them for good. High tide becomes safety, and the thoughts of living become more intrusive than the thoughts of dying. 

By the time T.K. woke up, the waves had already settled. He still wanted to die, but it had become a distant desire that he could ignore for a little while until it came back when the darkness caught up with him again. Maybe someday T.K. wouldn’t always have to be running, but he was good at running. Times when he was forced to stop were the problem because when you were stuck in place and unwilling to move was when the tide could carry you away.

* * *

**+1**

He’s unconscious. He knows that. He can feel bodies looming over him, urging him to wake up. They’re sad. He can hear that in their hushed voices, but the darkness is there too. It’s telling him that this could be the end. He could keep his eyes closed and never have to deal with life again, and this way, it wouldn’t even have to be his fault. It could merely be a tragedy, and he could die as a hero instead of a coward who just wants the easy way out.

Though, T.K. knows he’s never been a coward. He’s wanted to die many times, but it takes bravery to live with that or even die with that awful, all consuming feeling. It takes courage to get out of bed when it feels like a whole house has been built on your chest overnight on top of the foundation of bad decisions that were built the night before. It takes strength to resist the urge for the calmness of death when the chaos of life is so draining. For every time he tried or thought of killing himself, there is the low of still being alive and sick, and getting through that low is a miracle. The hard part isn’t being knocked down, or even getting back up; it’s being pulled to your feet by a force outside of yourself and having to stand on your own when your legs just want to buckle and your eyelids feel too heavy to open. It’s looking at the light around you when the darkness is so easy and doesn’t sting.

It would be so easy to stop fighting. The temptation is there, and he can feel the darkness pressing down on his eyelids like iron blocks. Everything is simpler with his eyes closed, especially when he doesn’t know the hardships that wait for him in the land of the conscious. He doesn’t know if he’s going to be permanently damaged when he wakes up. He knows no matter what, it’ll be emotionally hard to deal with nearly dying… again. Life has never been easy, and it never will be. He still thinks there’s a chance that death might be happier, but he can’t give up now.

Even if he wants to give up for himself, he can’t stand the thought of how the people who love him will react, especially his dad. He hates to think that he might miss out on falling in love or laughing with his friends. Wanting to die isn’t selfish, but to T.K. it has always made him feel that way. It’s filled him with guilt and made him feel like the worst person alive. It’s convinced him that the selfish thing is staying alive because whether they know it or not, the people who love him would have an easier time if he were dead, but he doesn’t want to think that anymore.

He wants to live. In this moment, he wants to see what can happen if he gives life a chance. Tomorrow, he might be back to wanting to be dead, but that’s okay because today, he’s willing to give life another shot.

He pushes at his eyelids. They twitch but they don’t open, of course, they don’t because living takes a lot more than will. It takes some semblance of harmony from every force imaginable.

T.K.’s out of breath from his attempt, but for all his faults, he’s always been good at endurance. As a kid, when he wasn’t quite as athletic as the other kids, he always pushed himself to be the fastest at the mile. By the second lap around the track, his throat would be dry and coppery, but he’d only push himself harder, fighting through the pain to prove to himself that he could beat all the other kids. He’d collapse to the ground, huffing and puffing but proud at his time. He’d get through it by reminding himself that he had just three more laps, just two more, just one more, just half a lap more, just a few feet more. He’d take it in small increments, so the agony seemed less laborious. He could do that now too. He’d take the distance victory of getting better and focus on the small victory of opening his eyes.

He pushed his eyes again, a little bit more than the last time, and it was still just a twitch, but a burst of white light flickered through the tiny crack, and the sound of his dad’s voice didn’t sound so much like it was submerged in water.

He kept pushing at his eyelids and finally after two dozen tries, his eyes peeled open tentatively, and he saw the blurry but familiar faces of his dad and almost boyfriend in the blinding light of the hospital. He snaps his eyes closed again, unable to handle the stark light, but he’s in control of them now. He opens them again, and the light is less painful. Another blink. Again, they open, and he can’t help testing to make sure they still work. He hears people around him, and there’s a flurry of stress and excitement, but he doesn’t make too much of it. He’s alive, and he’s going to find a way to handle whatever life throws at him.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this. It got darker than I anticipated, but my imagination can't help but run a little wild apparently, but I hope it turned out okay anyway! Feel free to leave your thoughts! Thanks for reading. You're all lovely.


End file.
